Renee Simms

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work_excerpt:

I have not seen Muhammad in over a year, but suddenly he is here running alongside the car that I drive, pumping one celebratory fist into the air. He’s shouting praises in response to my Barack Obama bumper sticker. He runs so close to the car that I get nervous and pull over to the curb. He is slimmer than I remember with longer hair and eyelashes. Although his cheekbones have sharpened and his voice is in a lower register, he is still not mature. He looks androgynous in the way of eleven-year-old boys. I sense the man that he will become, though; he lurks like pond life just behind the boyish eyes.
--excerpt from “Go! Be a Superhero,” an essay in 44 on 44: Forty –Four African American Writers on the Election of Barack Obama 44th President of the United States (Third World Press 2011).

author_statement:

I am a fiction writer originally from Detroit, Michigan. I'm a graduate of University of Michigan and Wayne State University Law School, and received my MFA in from Arizona State University. I also write nonfiction and poetry
Renee's work has been widely anthologized, appearing or forthcoming in All About Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color (University of Wisconsin Press 2014); Forty-Four on 44: Forty-Four African-American Writers on the Election of Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States (Third World Press 2011); Strange Cargo: An Emerging Voices Anthology (PEN Center USA 2008); Voices from Leimert Park (Tsehai 2006); Mischief Caprice & Other Poetic Strategies (Red Hen Press 2004); and Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature (Wiley & Sons 2000).
In addition to the journals listed below, her writing may also be found on Salon.com and in African Voices, Inkwell, and 42 Opus.
Renee has received fellowships and recognition from Vermont Studio Center, storySouth, PEN Center, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Kimbilio: A Center for African American Fiction, Sewanee Writers Conference, Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, and Cave Canem.
Renee is a visiting professor of African American Studies at University of Puget Sound in Tacoma. She focuses on the African American experience through the lenses of literature and law.